


the small print

by nowrunalong



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Allies, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Introspection, Mutual Understandings, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25478827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowrunalong/pseuds/nowrunalong
Summary: Apparently death is a little less permanent than it used to be.It's Darla, not Spike, who returns to Sunnydale in season 7. Canon divergence set after the events of 7x04. Not compliant with the timeline of AtS.
Relationships: Darla (BtVS) & Buffy Summers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20
Collections: Every Woman 2020





	the small print

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calenlily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calenlily/gifts).



At which hour the time arriveth, a champion wilt becometh known to Evil.  
The champion wilt beest instrumental in the rebirth of an ancient pow'r so formidable t’will  
turneth the tides in the war of the wicked and the valorous.

  


Resurrection is a violent rebirth.

The experience of becoming a vampire is a complete circle: a process of dying, and a process of becoming. It’s replacing inhibitions and anxieties and other frailnesses with a depth of passion that a mortal can only dream of experiencing. When you cease to be one thing and begin to exist as something else, it’s not loss. It’s metamorphosis.

When Darla is thrust back into existence—first nothing, then fists and teeth and violent desires—it’s like having a jigsaw mind stuffed into a fully-formed body. Flashes of thoughts, feelings, noises, _too much, all at once_ , refuse to cohere into one clear picture. Most debilitating of all is the incandescent light and a sound as rapid and desperate as a runaway train, drowning out her ability to process the information her senses are receiving.

Darla wants—she feels—she—she doesn’t know where she is. The adrenaline flows through her system, through her nerves, until it reaches her fingertips and she strikes outward instinctively. Nails sharpened to razor points tear the shirt of the man in front of her; the sound of silk being shredded bursts through the air like a clap of thunder. A flinch crosses the man’s carefully emotionless face.

There is no train, she thinks belatedly, as her thoughts catch up to her reality. She is inside a building. A man she’s never seen before is here with her.

She can sense his fear. It feeds her system the way oxygen feeds the living. As she breathes it in, her confusion and uncertainty begin to fade; her increased awareness solidifies her wild-eyed panic into a sense of dangerous calm. It reminds her of what she is.

The man looks at her like she’s a caged lion, but Darla’s not caged at all. She has her claws; she has her teeth.

“Wait,” he says, as she takes a step closer. “Don’t you want to know why we brought you back?”

She humours him for a moment. She doesn’t care a whole lot, but she cares enough to listen once.

“You were chosen. There’s an ancient prophecy that speaks of a champion. The champion will be instrumental in the rebirth of an ancient army of vampires. An army strong enough to return the Earth to demonkind.”

Darla runs her hands down her sides, enjoying how it feels to be here, to be _real_ , to have a body with bones and bloodlust. She lets one hand come to rest on her hip.

“Do you know how I died?” she asks.

The man regards her neutrally. “I’ve heard part of the story.”

“There was an ancient prophecy,” Darla says. “And there was a champion of demons. I was his faithful servant. But there was someone else in that prophecy. If you want me to help you now, then I know what happened before.” She steps forward until she’s backed the man up against the wall. He looks wary, now, but doesn’t try to push back or escape. She places a small hand against his chest, pinning him in place. “He lost. The prophecy was wrong.” Her nails dig into his bare skin through his tattered shirt. “Tell me why I shouldn’t rip your heart out of your chest right now.”

The man places a hand over hers where her clawed fingers press into his chest. He doesn’t try to pry it away. His skin is hot. Darla can feel the blood coursing through his veins—can hear it too, from this close. It makes her want.

“I know who got in the way,” the man says, his voice surprisingly steady. “We can help you get to him.”

“Him,” Darla repeats.

“Angel.”

The name makes Darla feel the same want that blood rushing through a living heart does. Desire. Hunger. Love. Hate. They’re all the same. They’ll all make you crazy. No other feelings are so entangled, uncontrollable urges taking over the body and forcing it into action until you’re fighting, drinking, or fucking. Or any combination of the above. Vampires know this better than anyone. Nothing else will make you feel alive.

“I’m not looking for Angel,” she tells him. She waits for the roar of hate-lust-love-hunger to subside, but the feeling continues to flow through her, rushing from her core to her extremities and back again, the _chug-chug-chug_ of a moving train, or of—

Of blood.

She feels the man’s heart beating rapidly beneath her fingertips. Slowly, she pulls it away and presses her hand to her own chest. It’s—

_Alive._

The heart inside her beats so strongly she can feel it in her eardrums.

Her voice drops to a hoarse whisper. “What did you do to me?”

“We brought you back to life.”

Darla shudders. She can feel it now, the way her senses have been dulled. She can’t hear his heartbeat at all—merely her own, desperate and wretched and unwanted. Her strength had been torn from her. Her confidence falters. Is he even afraid, or had she just wanted him to be?

She’s still pressed against him, close enough to bring a knee up between his legs as hard as she can. She runs for the door as he doubles over, gasping in pain.

Down the hall. Into an elevator.

“You should watch her,” a familiar voice says.

Darla spins wildly to face it as the doors close, trapping her inside. “You.”

“Me.” Angelus smiles. He is just as beautiful as Darla had remembered. He had been torn from her then, and now—

And now she has been torn from him. 

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to find you.”

“Angelus,” Darla breathes. How she hates him. How she adores him. She reaches to touch his cheek, desperately in need of something solid and real as her thoughts continue to spiral.

Her fingers pass through him like a figment.

She shakes her head, dismay tingeing her excitement-anger-relief at finding him again. “I don’t understand.” Everything is wrong. Her mind. Her body. _All wrong._

“I need you, Darla,” Angelus says. He leans against the elevator wall and crosses his arms over his chest. “I need your help.”

Darla isn’t a fool. Even compromised—weakened, _human_ —she can tell that something is strange about Angelus. She doesn’t have the wherewithal to analyze the cracks in her reality, however. His face is familiar—more familiar than anyone else’s, and certainly more familiar than her own. Familiarity is the only thing tethering Darla to herself now.

“What do you need me to do?” she asks, because there is nothing else in this world for her.

“Go to Sunnydale,” Angelus says.

Darla remembers Sunnydale. There had been a girl there. She’d ruined everything. The prophecy. The Master. Angelus. _Darla._ Everything she’d been and known and loved.

Yes, Darla thinks, her hatred giving her a motive to obey. Angel had been weak, then. What he’d done to Darla, he’d done for _her_.

“Watch her,” Angelus says again.

_The Slayer._

“Are you coming with me?” Darla asks, as the elevator doors open to the lobby. But she receives no answer.

Angelus is gone.

* * *

Buffy sits by herself at the end of a park bench and clasps her hands together in her lap. The defeat she feels tonight is more personal than usual. She’s used to fighting vampires, but this is different. There’s something about a fight with fate that weighs more heavily than a fight with tangible forces of evil.

Fighting fate, Buffy thinks, isn’t done with stakes and knives and crossbows. Fighting fate is like paperwork. It’s reading through long, tedious documents looking for teeny tiny loopholes while a timer counts down the seconds _tick-tick-tick_ in the background until all of those books and pages and binders explode in your face and you’ve lost, just like that, with no chance of appeal.

Maybe there’s one in a hundred chances you’ll find your way out. One in a thousand. One in a million.

Maybe, sometimes, there isn’t a way out at all.

Buffy hates that idea. To imagine that your story has been pre-determined with no chance of opting out unsettles her. This time hadn’t been any easier. And so she’d done what she’d always done: she’d fought against it. If you try hard enough at something, you become convinced that you’ll succeed.

She’d tried as hard as she could, in every way she knows how, and Cassie is still dead.

An approaching presence makes her skin crawl; she’s on her feet in an instant, stake gripped in her right hand.

The woman who emerges from the trees might as well be a ghost. Framed by pale blonde hair that glows silver under the moon, a menacing smile flashes white teeth. Buffy hasn’t seen that smile in almost six years.

“Darla?”

“Hi, Buffy,” Darla says.

Buffy is so intimately familiar with death and resurrection that seeing undead enemies return to haunt her is hardly startling anymore. And she and Darla had never been close, as far as enemies went.

“It’s been a while,” she says. “Last I remember of you is when—oh yeah. Angel killed you, and you went poof.”

“Foolish girl.” Darla steps onto the walkway; yellow street lights make her pale skin look sickly. “Everyone wants to talk about Angel. Can’t a couple of gals have a heart-to-heart without mentioning their ex-lover?”

“You’re not a gal. You’re a demon.”

“You sound so sure of yourself. Slayers are all self-righteous know-it-alls, but you’re the most insufferable one I’ve known in four hundred years.”

“You don’t know me,” Buffy says.

“I know that you were meant to die.”

“And I know that you did.”

“Very profound.” Darla takes a step closer.

Buffy remembers the night Angel had killed Darla, at the Bronze. In just a few short days, she’d experienced a roller coaster of feelings. One of those wooden tracks that shakes the whole way down as if it’s on the verge of collapse. Elation and horror, love and betrayal, threatening to send her crashing to the ground.

But it hadn’t been Buffy that Angel had betrayed, in the end.

Darla’s face is a placid mask, the straight line of her brows nearly disguising her hatred and anger. Nearly, but not quite. Her hands twitch at her side, fingers tensed to crooked claws. Buffy lifts her stake as Darla moves forward by another step.

“I need to know why you lived,” Darla says.

Buffy is a little taken aback. “What?”

“You were meant to die,” Darla says again.

There is something different about Darla, Buffy realizes. Now that she’s closer, she can see her eyes more clearly. There is more than hatred there. They look tired, or anxious or—fearful? She speaks with disdain, but her lips are drawn tight. There is less of an unholy swagger to her movements; less of a predatory, catlike creep.

Darla had died twice, and now she’s back and there’s something wrong with her.

“What happened to you?” Buffy asks.

Darla looks amused. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“Funny,” Buffy says. “That’s never all anyone wants.”

“That is all I want.” Darla looks her in her eye. Like it’s an afterthought, she adds: “I’d also love to rip your throat out with my teeth. But I won’t.”

Buffy hadn’t been very afraid of Darla at sixteen, alight with the overconfidence of youth, and the threat doesn’t concern her very much now. She’s far more curious about finding out what’s happened to her. It can’t hurt to talk, try to get a little intel. She rests her stake on the bench.

“I died,” Buffy says.

Darla evidently isn’t expecting this answer, just as Buffy hadn’t expected the question.

“So the prophecy was right.”

“The prophecy was a load of hooey.”

Darla narrows her eyes and waits for Buffy to elaborate.

With a shrug, Buffy says: “I mean, they got that one little bit right. ‘The Slayer will die.’ I can’t really argue it, ‘cause I technically did. But that ‘the Master will rise and he will reign on Earth forever and ever’ stuff? I mean, give me a break. That guy did not read the fine print. You know, the ‘if you kill someone and you don’t want her friends to resuscitate her, you should do it in a more effective way than leaving her to drown’ bit. Sure, he gets points for dramatics, but I was only dead for a couple minutes, and he’s never coming back.” She raises an eyebrow. “Of course, I thought that about you, so what do I know? Apparently death is a little less permanent than it used to be.”

“He was a fool, too,” Darla says, with a surprising amount of vitriol.

Fruit Punch Mouth deserves that, Buffy thinks.

“So, now that I’ve answered your question,” Buffy says, “what’s up with you? How come you’re all walking-around-y?”

Darla looks across the park. There is no one else but them here. Even the stray cats and neighbourhood raccoons have kept their distance tonight. For several moments, Buffy thinks that Darla won’t answer.

When she does, it’s as she’s turning away, her voice so quiet that Buffy scarcely hears her.

“I don’t know,” she says.

And then Buffy is alone again.

* * *

Darla stays in a mausoleum she remembers from the last time she’d been in town. It connects to the underground tunnels she’d lived in then, although she prefers to remain on the surface now. The light has a drastic effect on her new physiology. The sun energizes her, and the darkness exhausts her. She sleeps at night, tossing and turning in a bed that smells of mildew.

During the day, she watches.

She can move as quietly as she ever did, through parks and yards and houses. She learns quickly that the needs of humans are impossible to suppress, and she has no money to speak of. She watches as teenagers return from school to empty houses and let themselves in with poorly-hidden keys before exiting again, carrying cigarettes and skateboards. She doesn’t need an invitation to enter.

Inside, Darla searches for things to bring back with her. She takes food from refrigerators and clothes from dressers. She takes classical CDs and gold-rimmed glassware and a potted basil plant.

She avoids mirrors. The face they display when she passes by them unsettles her.

Darla never goes into the Slayer’s house. Girls swarm like bees between its hallowed walls, noisy and restless. They are foolish not to see her. They should learn to see—with eyes, and with ears—before learning to fight.

When she returns to the mausoleum in the evening, Darla is certain that she sees Angelus immediately. 

She’s using a wine glass to water her basil plant when she senses that she’s not alone. She had been—and then she isn’t. She sets the glass down deliberately and turns to face him. “I thought you were in LA.”

“Just checking up on you,” he says, sitting down on the back of an armchair. He looks to the potted plant, eyebrows raised. “You’re a gardener now?”

Darla knows nothing of gardening, but the plant had appealed to her on some incomprehensible base level. “It smells good,” she says, with a dismissive shrug.

“I told you to watch the Slayer,” Angelus says.

“I’ve been watching her.”

“Watch her,” Angelus repeats, “not talk with her.” 

“What difference does it make?”

“Don’t be so difficult, Darla. I think you’ll be pleased with our new plan.”

Darla narrows her eyes. “Whose plan, Angelus?”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is, you get to kill the Slayer this time. Make sure she stays nice and dead. Don’t make the same mistake your Master did.” He notices the look on her face. “Come on, Darla. Don’t tell me you don’t want to.”

“I thought you wanted to kill this one. Why haven’t you done it already?”

“Change of orders.”

“You don’t follow orders.” 

“Ah,” Angelus says, “but you do.”

Darla tries to bite out a retort, but it gets stuck in her throat. She bites her tongue instead.

“Watch her,” Angelus says. “But don’t talk to her.” He stands and soundlessly dusts his hands off. “She’ll get inside your head.”

* * *

Buffy is tired after defeating the Turok-Han. She’d won, and she’s tired, and her house is full of people—all of them watching her, even now, like she’s a broken, fragile thing. She feels the bruises on her ribs, the scrapes on her face. She knows how it looks.

She’s _not_ broken or fragile.

She’s not like those old ceramic pots from her mother’s gallery that are still boxed up in a storage unit somewhere, waiting for someone who speaks legal-ese to make a decision about what should go where.

Buffy can’t sit around and wait for other people to make up their minds. She doesn’t need a warning label, _handle with care_ , stamped across her forehead for people to gape at.

She needs to be alone. Not the ‘alone’ she’s been feeling—the ‘alone’ of being the unelected leader of a team of girls who deserve to be at a movie, or out shopping, or, God, even at school—but ‘alone’ in its simplest, most literal sense.

She needs quiet. She needs to escape the eyes that follow her every move.

The back porch blacks out most of the kerfuffle inside the house. The outdoor air is comfortingly cool against her skin. Buffy listens to the sound of crickets for several moments, grateful for the change of track, but—

But someone is still watching her.

“Darla,” she says, wary.

“You’re looking worse for wear,” Darla says, from the other end of the porch. “You’ve got a little—” She gestures at the cut on the side of Buffy’s face. “I like it.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I know. You don’t want to talk to anyone.”

“What are you doing here?”

Darla smiles. “Watching you.”

Buffy shakes her head.

“It’s not so bad. At least I don’t worry about you, like all your friends do. They really thought you weren’t up for it. They thought they’d be bringing you home in a basket. I thought so too.”

“I don’t care what you think.”

“You’re more interesting than I realized. People cut your limbs off and you keep staggering forward like nothing is wrong. You’re every bit as much a fool as I thought.” 

Darla regards her with fascination.

“‘Tis but a flesh wound,” Buffy says, because it needed to be said. She looks ahead, still tired. “Maybe I am a fool. But at least I do what needs to be done.”

“You could stop,” Darla points out.

“Is that what you’re here to do? Find out what it’ll take to break me? Even Angel tried that. He did a pretty good job, if you’re looking for pointers. Not good enough, though. I’m still here.”

“I’m not Angel.”

“But you still take orders from his ghost.”

“He’s not dead,” Darla says, her tone dangerous, “and I don’t take orders from him.”

“I’ve heard you. ‘Oh, Angelus, I’ll do whatever you say!’ You know you can make your own choices for once, right? But no, you just keep waiting for old dead guys to tell you what to.”

Darla’s fingers curl. “You’ve been following me.”

“You started it.”

“That’s true.”

“Angel isn’t here,” Buffy says. “He’s in LA. And he’s not Angelus anymore. So you’re either talking to yourself, or something is playing tricks on you. What happened to you? It’s like you’re all… fragile.” As the word falls from Buffy’s mouth, she realizes it’s the one she’s been looking for.

Maybe she isn’t fragile and broken. But she thinks that Darla might be.

“I’m fine,” Darla says tightly.

It’s so clearly a lie that Buffy can’t even manage a comeback.

Darla doesn’t add anything else. She stays at the end of the porch, silent and unmoving. Buffy stays too, appreciating the quiet from where she’s seated on the steps.

Darla is still there when Buffy stands to go back inside. Buffy considers the shadows under Darla’s eyes, her bedraggled hair, and pieces them together.

“Hey—Darla?” she says. She props the door open with her elbow so it doesn’t shut behind her.

Darla meets her eye from across the porch. “What?”

Buffy wants to tell her, but she doesn’t. For a long moment, she doesn’t say anything else. And then she smiles, tired but sincere. “Have a good night.”

* * *

Darla can’t sleep. She tosses and turns in the dark and thinks about the way that Buffy had looked at her on the porch.

Maybe the Slayer _had_ gotten into her head. Angelus had been right to warn her. She never should have talked to Buffy—

—except it’s _not_ that. Her discomfort isn’t about Buffy at all. She’s lying on moth-eaten sheets in a place made for dead people. It’s the texture of damp cotton that’s keeping her from her slumber. This is a problem she can solve.

Darla gathers a few items she’d grown fond of—a gold necklace, a bottle of Dior perfume, the potted basil plant—and heads for the residential street that flanks the cemetery. With rumblings of an impending apocalypse, families had begun to leave. Just a few, at first, and then a mass exodus.

It’s evident that this place’s former residents left in a hurry, Darla thinks, placing the basil plant on the kitchen counter of the biggest house on the street. The refrigerator is still running, perfectly ripe apples lurking amongst Tupperware containers of spoiled leftovers and styro-packs of expired meats. She takes a bite of one as she rifles through cupboards and drawers, taking inventory of her new belongings.

In the master bedroom, Darla is greeted by a king-sized bed with soft sheets and plush down-filled pillows. She climbs into it and switches the bedside Tiffany lamp on, basking in the gentle mosaic light it casts against the pale walls.

“Trouble sleeping?” Angelus asks from the doorway.

Darla smooths the comforter over her legs. “When you told me to watch the Slayer, I didn't realize I would be the one getting a stalker.”

“If we want to win, we all have to play our part.” Angelus looks toward the bedside table. “You should check inside that drawer.”

“Maybe I don’t want to play a part. Maybe you should find someone else.” Darla does open the drawer, however. Inside it, there’s an issue of People, a pair of reading glasses, and a handgun.

“It has to be you,” Angelus says.

“Why?”

Angelus shrugs. “I didn't ask.”

“And you just assume it’s true? You haven’t even told me who’s planning this—whatever this is.” Darla shuts the drawer.

“Have a little faith, Darla.”

Having faith in someone unseen is one thing. Having faith in someone whose motive, whose identity, whose _name_ hasn’t been disclosed—that’s a different kind of ask.

If it were Angelus asking—

But this isn’t Angelus. He always comes back, but he never tells Darla anything important, and Darla can never touch him.

He isn’t Angelus, but at least he’s here.

“I know you aren’t real,” she tells him, “but I don’t want to be alone.”

She’d never wanted to be alone. She’d always found company, even if company was tied to a chair with a blindfold.

“Don’t worry, Darla,” Angelus says. “You’re not crazy.”

She looks him in the eye. “That’s not what I was worried about.”

“Okay,” he says, humoring her. “What’s the problem, then?”

“You’re not Angelus,” she says. “I know Angelus. I _made_ Angelus.”

“You believe the Slayer?”

“She’s a brat. Not a liar. And you’re—” Darla considers him. His familiar face, his intangible body. “You’re a memory.”

* * *

Darla comes home after an evening walk to find her door ajar. It shouldn’t matter—this isn’t really her house, and no one else is coming back to it—but the wind blowing through the open door had left a chill throughout the first floor. Her skin prickles with goosebumps.

She would have relished in this when she was a vampire. Now, she feels cold and more afraid than she’d ever admit. She grabs a knife from a kitchen drawer and heads upstairs.

It’s the Slayer she finds in the master bedroom. Buffy doesn’t look up when Darla enters the room and sits down on the antique chair across from the bed. The chair’s previous owner had left some of his shirts draped across the back of it. Darla discards them onto the floor.

“Why the long face?” she asks.

Darla doesn’t get an answer immediately, but she’s patient. She sits the knife on the dresser and waits.

“They don’t want my help,” Buffy says eventually. She looks down as she speaks, talking at the mahogany hardwood floor. “There’s nothing else I can do for them.”

“You’re admitting defeat?”

“No.” Buffy thinks about it. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Coward.”

Buffy sits up a little straighter. “What?”

“You’re giving up.”

“Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re better off without me.” There’s a dead look in Buffy’s eyes, like the fight that gives them their spark has been extinguished. “They asked me to leave.” 

Neither questions that she’d come here, of all places. It makes sense, somehow. They aren’t wanted anywhere else.

Buffy looks up at Darla for the first time since she’d entered the room. There are dark circles around her eyes. Darla has those now, too. They're the worst in the morning, when she wakes up. “I can’t force them to…” She closes her eyes and lets out a breath.

“They tell you to leave and—what? That’s it? You go?”

“Why,” Buffy says emphatically, “do you even care?”

And that spark is there, just for a moment.

“You’ve never done what people want of you,” Darla says. “Not once in your fucking life. You were destined to die when you were a schoolgirl. Not even that kind of direct prophetic order made the slightest difference. Here you still stand. You should hold your head high, not whimper in the dark like a helpless child.” She looks Buffy in the eye. “You’ve never done what people want of you,” she says again, “only what they need of you.”

“What if they really needed me to leave? Maybe this is—this is for the best. I can’t ask anyone else to risk their lives for me. This is my job. They’re just… bystanders.”

“When I was a whore,” Darla says, “that was a job. Do you know why?”

Buffy looks at her, some unnameable emotion on her face.

“I got paid.”

“Nobody else can do what I do,” Buffy says, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter anymore that—”

“That you gain nothing from this?” Darla finishes. “The universe tried to make you kneel at its feet, and you spat in its face every time. You’re not a spineless idiot. Don’t be one now. Go charging into battle by yourself; drag your friends with you, kicking and screaming; leave this town now and never come back. But don’t just sit there and take it.”

Buffy digests her tirade in silence, arms folded over her knees. And then: “I knew something was different about you, ever since you came back. I finally realized what it is the other day.”

Darla says nothing.

“There’s no other explanation for—I knew something was different about you.”

“I’ve had my comeuppance,” Darla says. Because that’s what this must be: punishment for centuries of sin.

“No.” Buffy shakes her head. “I understand you. You’re—you didn't want this. I know.” There’s compassion in her gaze now. “I died again,” Buffy says. “The first time, it barely counted. It was just enough to throw a wrench in someone else’s plans. The second time, I was really gone. I was dead for months. When I came back, I thought I’d been dragged into hell. I didn't understand why I was here, or why I felt the way that I did. It was like I’d left the parts of me that mattered the most in the ground, and I couldn’t get them back. All I wanted was to leave again.”

Yes, Darla thinks. Who is she? She’s not the girl who’d lived four hundred years ago. Darla doesn’t even remember the name she’d had then. She’s not the vampire who’d wrecked havoc for centuries, either.

She feels the abomination beating inside her and wants to rip it out.

“Who brought you back?”

Buffy clasps her hands together in her lap. “My friends.”

Her friends had damned her to hell. That’s something Darla can understand. Sometimes you need a little damnation to wake you up. She’d learned that when she’d become a vampire.

“The ones who brought me back,” Darla says, “have a part for me to play.”

“Are you doing it?”

“No.”

“Good. Just because they brought you back doesn’t mean you owe them anything. It’s your life. It’s now or never.” Buffy frowns. “I think Bon Jovi said that, but the point still stands. You should be able to do what you want with it.”

“And you?” Darla asks. “What do you want?”

Buffy smiles, small and resigned. “It doesn’t matter. Some people have to give that up, I think.”

“It’s your life,” Darla reminds her.

“And I can save so many others,” Buffy says. “That’s more important.”

“After all this? You’re still a fool.”

Buffy gets up from the bed. “I’m not a fool,” she says. “I’m human.”

* * *

The scythe feels heavy in her hands, but in a comfortable way, like an old blanket draped over her legs in the wintertime, or a stake whittled from a newly-fallen branch before the wood dries and splinters. Buffy hefts it up. “I like it already,” she tells the last Guardian.

The old woman regards her seriously. “Do you know the source of the Slayer’s power?”

“This?” Buffy asks, skeptical. And then: “Oh, you mean those shadow guys that made the first Slayer by binding her to a demon? I know a bit about that.”

“The descendents of the Shadowmen still govern the Slayer line.”

“The Watcher’s Council,” Buffy says. “Ugh. No offense to Giles, but I always hated those guys.”

“You emancipated yourself from them. You turned down the Shadowmen’s offers to make you stronger. All because you have always known you cannot sacrifice your humanity for power.”’

“Kinda creepy you were watching,” Buffy says, “but also, thanks for noticing.”

“There is one more thing you can do to separate your power from their governance,” the last Guardian tells her.

Buffy shrugs. “The whole Council got blown up. They’re not exactly one of my main concerns right now. I’m thinking more ‘giant army of uber-vamps’.”

“You have the ability to shift the balance. There is an ancient prophecy that speaks of a champion. The champion will be instrumental in the rebirth of—”

There’s a _bang_ , and Buffy jumps back, the scythe gripped in both hands. 

Darla steps out from behind her with a handgun as the last Guardian falls to the floor.

* * *

“Darla,” Buffy says frantically. “What are you doing? I thought you were through with following orders.” 

Darla points the gun at her. “I’m not following orders. I’m following you.”

“This isn’t who you are.”

Darla doesn’t know who she is. Her memories aren’t even her own. She was a girl for two decades and a demon for four centuries. Now, she’s a different kind of monster. Humanity has no want for her corrupted, immoral heart, and evil wants only to eat her up and spit her out like a poisonous weed.

 _Do the Slayer next_ , Angelus says, inside her head. She can’t see him anywhere, and yet she feels him everywhere. He’d sunk his fangs into her mind. It feels—it feels pleasant, Darla thinks. She smiles. It doesn’t matter who she is. Angel doesn’t want her. God doesn’t, either. But there is still a place for her, within the prophecy. All she has to do is stick to the plan.

“Darla,” Buffy says again. “It’s not too late. You can still—” 

“Don’t give me your speech,” Darla says. “‘You can still make your own decisions. You can still choose to be good.’ That’s what you were going to say, isn't it?” The gun is still gripped tightly in her hand. “I’m not good. I’m barely even a person. But I’m still here. I can reach out and touch you, and you’d feel it. I can fire this gun, and the bullet would stop your heart. There is no reason. There is no order. Don’t you see? Good and evil don’t matter. There’s only existing. There’s only the plan.”

“You’re wrong,” Buffy says.

 _Do it now_ , Angelus orders.

“I know you’re wrong because I’ve felt what you’ve felt. Darla, listen to me. I know we’re not friends, and I know that you have no reason to trust me—”

—trust her? Buffy hasn’t lied to her—

“—but even if you can’t make an effort to change for yourself, or for me, there is always another reason to try.” Buffy takes a step closer. “What do you want, Darla? Please just think about it.”

 _Don’t listen to her_ , the voice in her head says. _You don’t belong in her world. You never will._

Once again, Darla’s skin crawls with un-belonging. Why is she here? There is no place for her. She wants… 

She wants to be wanted. She wants to not be alone.

Buffy reaches for her, careful, her fingertips coming to rest gently atop Darla’s outstretched hand. Her touch is tangible. Real. She’s not a figment of Darla’s imagination. She’s not a memory that belongs to someone Darla hasn’t been in six years.

Darla flinches.

“You did this,” she says to Angelus. Her voice shakes. “That’s how you know everything. You did this to me. You wanted this to happen.”

“I want to help you,” Buffy says. “Just let me help you.”

 _This is the only great thing you’ll ever do_ , the figment of Evil says. _Now pull the trigger._

Slowly, Darla lowers her hand and lets the gun slip through her fingers.

* * *

“It’s kind of ironic, don’t you think?” Buffy says. “I mean, these guys are really lacking in the reading comprehension department. They thought that old prophecy was telling them exactly what they wanted to hear. I mean, they didn't even question it! I hope there’s a circle of hell that makes them retake grade nine English again, and again, and again…”

The rebirth of an ancient power. Willow is readying the spell now. Buffy is confident it will work. Not because of any prophecy, but because she believes in the people she loves. They’d believed in her, too, when she’d told them her plan.

“I never did tell you what I want,” Buffy says, standing next to Darla at the mouth of Hell. “My whole life, I’ve been told that I’ll be alone. One girl in all the world. I have my family and my friends, but I’ve always felt that… being the Slayer separated me from them.” She looks out across the pantheon of evils gathering before her. “I can’t do this on my own. And I don’t want to.

“All I’ve ever wanted was to have a normal life, and—I can’t have that. I never will. But I’ve realized ‘normal’ isn’t the important thing. I mean, sure, it would be great not to have to worry about the world ending every time I fall asleep. But it’s—it’s the constant isolation. The way there’s this divide between me and everyone that I love because—I’m the Slayer. And they’re not.”

She looks at Darla. Darla, who had been so many people that she’d lost herself. Darla, who had helped Buffy realize exactly who she is.

A lover, and a fighter. They aren’t so different, in the end. It’s love that makes her keep fighting.

“I don’t want to be alone,” Buffy says.

“I know,” Darla tells her. “So do the damn thing.”

* * *

She can pinpoint the moment the witch’s spell touches her. Darla had felt the electricity of power when she’d changed before, human to demon, new strength lifting her up and out of the ground. This is different. It’s bright as sunlight in her bloodstream. For a brief moment, in the face of this radiant energy, she feels as if she should be turned to ash. She stretches her fingertips, revelling in the warmth that spreads through them.

For a third time, she’s been reborn. Demon, human—

“Darla?” Buffy asks. She reaches toward her, an offer of partnership. “Did it work?”

The strength in Darla’s veins is connected to something larger—something entirely different than what she’d felt as a vampire. A web of power stretching across the globe. Women readying themselves for war.

Slayers.

With a grin, Darla takes Buffy’s hand.


End file.
